So many in the U.S. celebrate July 4th, but more correctly it is " Independence day", and it seems to me that many have forgotten what that is really all about...

As this year it falls on the Sabbath, I was contemplating true freedom and independence and some famous quotes about that and how they blend with and compliment one another, such as...

"...But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and and to provide new guards for their future security" -- Declaration of Independence 1776

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security” - Benjamin Franklin

"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?" - Herbert Spencer

"Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep." - Eric Hoffer

" Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions." Thomas Jefferson

And then there is the True Shepherd and King... "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,To preach the acceptable year of the Lord" "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

For when *THEY* shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe... and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel... ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets"

Anyway.. I remain thankful for what I have and am firmly convinced it is up to each of us to be informed and to safeguard the liberty of others in order to remain free ourselves.